Hidden Depths

If You Go

Contemporary Arts Center
44 E. Sixth St., downtown

Monday – Tuesday: Galleries are closed
Wednesday – Friday, 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Saturday –Sunday: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

www.contemporaryartscenter.org

Breaking Water, a group exhibition now open at the Contemporary Arts Center, brings together works in installation, video, photography, painting, sculpture, and performance that explore water, liquidity, and feminism.

Cecilia Bengolea (b. 1979, Buenos Aires, Argentina; lives and works in Paris, France) Mosquito Net, 2019/22Vinyl mounted on wood, 5 parts.

Courtesy of the artist and Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm/Paris

Saodat Ismailova (b. 1981, Tashkent, Uzbekistan; lives and works in Paris and Tashkent), Stains of Oxus, 2016. Three-channel color video, with sound, 23 min. Courtesy of the artist.

Andrea Carlson (b. 1979; lives and works in Chicago, IL). Crude Hands, 2016. Digital video, 1 min, 36 sec. Courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis.

Martha Atienza (b. 1981, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in Bantayan Island, Cebu City, Philippines), Our Islands 11°16_58.4 N 123°45_07.0 E_2017_, 2019. Color video, 14 min., 32 sec. single channel HD video_no sound_C

Courtesy of the artist and Silverlens Gallery, Manila.

Marcos Ávila Forero (b. 1983, Paris, France; lives and works in Paris), ATRATO, 2014. HD color video, with sound. 13 min., 52 sec. Collection of the National Centre for the Visual Arts - National Fund for Contemporary Art, France; Pori Art Museum, Finland; and Bank of the Republic of Colombia Museum, Colombia.

Courtesy of the artist and ADN Gallery, Barcelona.

The exhibition includes four new CAC commissions by Paul Maheke, Josèfa Ntjam, Claudia Peña Salinas, and a collaborative work by Calista Lyon and Carmen Winant. These works are includes with new and existing work by an international group of artists whose work addresses timely concerns including water rights, climate change, and the effects of natural disasters. Co-curated by CAC Senior Curator Amara Antilla and independent curator and writer Clelia Coussonnet, Breaking Water will be accompanied by a parallel film screening program that extends the exhibition’s central themes.

“Breaking Water expands from conversations and ideas that Clelia and I began exploring with other artists and academics analyzing the subject of water and its many forms: a source of life, a weapon of destruction, a basic human need, and a primary element that connects us with each other and our environment,” said Antilla.

For the exhibition, the CAC has partnered with the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati to host a conversation about water, gender, sexuality, and race organized by Dr. Chandra Frank. The speakers will touch on themes related to climate justice, social movements, and possible futures.

“The artists involved tell personal and poignant stories through their works that lead us to consider more resilient ways of relating and acting in the world.” “In the past years, there has been a convergence of exhibitions and art events in relation to oceans, rivers and swamps, which demonstrate a rising concern and awareness of how much our futures depend on the balance and vitality of liquid environments—on the defense of their rights, and on a respectful and dynamic relationship with them,” explained Coussonnet. “Breaking Water explores water as an agent of change and transformation, capable of eliciting new forms of action and knowledge production.”

Breaking Water continues through August 15.

Concurrent to Breaking Water is Center of Unfinished Business, a roving reading room and discursive program organized by the multimedia platform Contemporary And (C&) and conceived by C& co-founders and artistic directors Julia Grosse and Yvette Mutumba. The project was launched in 2017 and has since traveled to art spaces and museums around the world. The CAC’s iteration, sited in the lobby, features a curated selection of seminal books and a series of discussions that respond to water as a literal and metaphorical framework for exploring African American and African diasporic experiences and cultures. Through the selection of significant and at times unsettling texts, the installation highlights the ubiquitous traces of colonialism that extend throughout all facets of life.